Orlando Counts On Good Cup Turnout

Call the World Cup office in New York or the local committees helping organize the 1994 soccer extravaganza, and staffers will tell you the games are sold out.

They are not, and if ticket sales follow the trend established by the past three Cup tournaments, they won't this time, either.

In 1986, when the soccer world flocked to Mexico City to see the best players in the world, one of every four seats at first-round games were empty.

Orlando is host to five World Cup games next summer, four of them in the first round, when attendance is expected to be softest.

But organizers say they aren't worried.

''We're confident we will sell every ticket to every game,'' said Jim Trecker, spokesman for World Cup USA in New York.

So far, 20,000 of the approximately 68,000 tickets available for World Cup games in the Citrus Bowl have been sold.

The remaining 70 percent have been set aside for foreign fans, corporate sponsors and bigwigs with the World Cup governing body, said John Griffin, a World Cup spokesman in New York.

If those groups don't buy up their allocation, more tickets would be made available to U.S. fans in February, Griffin said.

Organizers say the games will sell out because the event is being staged in the United States - and Americans know how to put on a sporting spectacular.

Two economic studies gauging the impact of the games on Orlando estimate that 66,000 fans would attend each of five Citrus Bowl games, or about 97 percent of the stadium would be filled.

Peter Rosendorff, an economics professor at the University of Southern California who co-authored one study, concluded that by the time each World Cup dollar turned over in the local economy, Orlando would see a total impact of $208 million.

Owen Beitsch, who helped put together the other study, calculated the direct impact at $99.5 million. He called his estimate ''very, very conservative.''

Orlando will fare better than other first-round locations in the past, Beitsch said, because it is a major tourist destination.

Local businesses are starting to count on the success of the cup games.

John Meunier, general manager of the Omni Orlando Hotel, has committed 200 of his 290 rooms to World Cup guests for 18 days next summer.

''I believe that if not sold out, I would expect in excess of 90 percent of the seats to be sold,'' said Meunier, who also serves on the board of directors of World Cup Orlando/Kissimmee.

Said Chad Martin, marketing chief of the Orlando/Kissimmee host committee, ''Even at 72 percent, think of the dynamic impact that's going to have on June and July that wasn't there this year.''

''I'm not going to sit here and say every seat in the Citrus Bowl will be sold out, but Orlando is in a unique situation. You can kill a lot of vacation birds with one stone,'' Martin said.